Independent Alarms?

I've been a pro user for several years, and just added accounts for my colleagues. Great product. One area that has always been a difficulty for me and is now compounding as I work with more people is the fact that the alarms are tied to the due date. This isn't so much a problem when I'm creating and working with my own tasks, as I just set the alarm for the time I want based on the due date. But when I'm collaborating, the tie between these items can create confusion. Specifically, there are times that I want to set a reminder for an event that has no due date. Also, my need is often to have an alarm go off based on some event that has nothing to do with the due date for the actual task, which we might be changing. That is, I might set a reminder to work on the sales report a week before I meet with a particular client, even though the sales report due date is several weeks later, and might also change for unrelated reasons (a colleague changes it to a week later because new sales activity has developed and we want to include it on the report). But the reminder is needed for the sake of the client meeting, not the actual due date of the report. As it stands, I have to create a separate alarm, usually in my calendar. Much more complicated, especially when I'm sharing and managing tasks across collaborators.